教师又成美国稀缺人才

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers.

加州罗内特帕克——在几年之内情况反转，各个学区从解雇教师转而慌忙招募教师。

Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers.

At the same time, a growing number of English-language learners are entering public schools, yet it is increasingly difficult to find bilingual teachers. So schools are looking for applicants everywhere they can — whether out of state or out of country — and wooing candidates earlier and quicker.

Some are even asking prospective teachers to train on the job, hiring novices still studying for their teaching credentials, with little, if any, classroom experience.

一些学校甚至雇佣正在攻读教师资质的学生，并为缺乏课堂教学经验的他们提供在职培训。

Louisville, Ky.; Nashville; Oklahoma City; and Providence, R.I., are among the large urban school districts having trouble finding teachers, according to the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban districts. Just one month before the opening of classes, Charlotte, N.C., was desperately trying to fill 200 vacancies.

据大城市学校理事会(Council of the Great City Schools)透露，目前面临师资紧张的大型城市学区还包括路易维尔（肯塔基州）、纳什维尔、俄克拉荷马城以及普罗维登斯（罗德岛）。距离开学不到一个月，北卡罗来纳的夏洛特市正在拼命填补两百个职位空缺。

Nationwide, many teachers were laid off during the recession, but the situation was particularly acute in California, which lost 82,000 jobs in schools from 2008 to 2012, according to Labor Department figures. This academic year, districts have to fill 21,500 slots, according to estimates from the California Department of Education, while the state is issuing fewer than 15,000 new teaching credentials a year.

“We are no longer in a layoff situation,” said Monica Vasquez, chief human resources officer for the San Francisco Unified School District, which offered early contracts to 140 teachers last spring in a bid to secure candidates before other districts snapped them up. “But there is an impending teacher shortage,” Ms. Vasquez added, before correcting herself: “It’s not impending. It’s here.”

With state budgets rallying after the recession, spending on public schools is slowly recovering, helping to fuel some of the hiring. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown persuaded voters in 2012 to pass a sales and income tax measure that raised funding for public schools.

But educators say that during the recession and its aftermath prospective teachers became wary of accumulating debt or training for jobs that might not exist. As the economy has recovered, college graduates have more employment options with better pay and a more glamorous image, like in a rebounding technology sector.

And that has led districts here — and elsewhere — to people like Jenny Cavins.

这一状况导致各地学区把目光投向像珍妮·卡文斯(Jenny Cavins)他们。

Ms. Cavins, 31, who once worked as a paralegal and a nanny, began a credentialing program at Sonoma State University here in Rohnert Park less than a year ago. She still has a semester to finish before she graduates. But later this month she will begin teaching third grade — in both English and Spanish — at Flowery Elementary School in Sonoma. Ms. Cavins said she would lean on mentors at her new school as well as her professors. “You are not on that island all alone,” she said.

Esmeralda Sanchez Moseley, the principal at Flowery, said she could not find a fully credentialed — let alone experienced — teacher to fill the opening. “The applicant pool was next to nothing,” she said. “It’s crazy. Six years ago, this would not have happened, but now that is the landscape we are in.”

Before taking over a classroom solo in California, a candidate typically must complete a post-baccalaureate credentialing program, including stints as a supervised student teacher. But in 2013-14, the last year for which figures are available, nearly a quarter of all new teaching credentials issued in California were for internships that allowed candidates to work full time as teachers while simultaneously enrolling in training courses at night or on weekends.

In addition, the number of emergency temporary permits issued to allow noncredentialed staff members to fill teaching posts jumped by more than 36 percent from 2012 to 2013.

不仅如此，允许非认证教师填补教职缺口的紧急临时许可在2012至2013年间激增了35%。

At California State University, Fresno, 100 of the 700 candidates enrolled in the teacher credentialing program this year will teach full time while completing their degree.

在弗雷斯诺的加州州立大学(California State University)，700名教师资格认证项目的注册学生中有100名完成他们学位的同时，从事着全职的工作。

“We don’t like it,” said Paul Beare, dean of the university’s school of education. “But we do it.”

“我们并不喜欢这样，”该校教育学院院长保罗·贝尔(Paul Beare)说道。“但是我们只能这样做。”

Some educators worry that as school districts scramble to fill empty slots, the quality of the teaching force could weaken.

一些教育业者担忧随着学区慌忙填补空缺，师资的质量会下降。

“There are not enough people who will look at teacher education or being a teacher as a job that they want to pursue,” said Carlos Ayala, dean of the school of education at Sonoma State University.

“没有足够多的人把教师教育或者教书育人视为他们的职业愿望，”索诺马州立大学教育学院院长卡洛斯·阿雅拉(Carlos Ayala)说。

Ashlee Pepin, 31, turned down several opportunities to work as a teaching intern while still earning education credentials at Sonoma State because, she said, she had seen the difference “between a teacher who is passionate and has a lot of skill, and a teacher who is just there.”

Ms. Pepin, who graduated in June, will begin teaching special education next week at an elementary school in Petaluma, north of San Francisco. “I wanted to make sure I was prepared,” Ms. Pepin said on a recent morning as she sorted through old textbooks in her new classroom.

Recruiters from Oklahoma City have traveled to Puerto Rico and Spain on the hunt for teachers, while in Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina, the superintendent, Ann Blakeney Clark, tells audiences at every community meeting she attends that the schools are desperate to hire. “I’ve gone on to say ‘Everyone in this room knows someone who was a teacher, who is a teacher,’” Ms. Clark said. “‘And I am asking you to email, text or call them and invite them to teach in Charlotte.’”

Last spring here in Rohnert Park, about 50 miles north of San Francisco, the superintendent, Robert A. Haley, found a creative way to fill a vacancy for an elementary school physical education teacher: He had his daughter’s high school cross-country coach fill in temporarily.

The coach, David Kimari, 26, who has worked as a home health aide and is studying kinesiology, will continue to teach P.E. this school year at two elementary schools in the district. He will begin taking teacher credential courses next January.

When Mr. Kimari started teaching, administrators gave him binders full of lesson plans left by his predecessors, and he asked a teaching friend in Oakland for advice. “I went into it like ‘Oh, man, I don’t know what I am getting myself into,’” said Mr. Kimari, sporting a tie-dyed bandanna and socks on a recent, scorching afternoon when he had assembled girls from the cross-country team for a summer conditioning session in a state park.

But he said that he realized that, “as long as you are passionate and as long as you can communicate with other people and you don’t give off hostile vibes, you can pick it up along the way.”

但他说她意识到，“只有你充满激情，与别人保持沟通并且克制自己的敌对情绪，你就能一步步掌握门道。”

Linda Darling-Hammond, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and head of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the United States should plan more for teacher shortages. “Other nations create incentives and supports in order to be able to fill the needs in a much more deliberate and conscious way,” she said.

In the near term, teachers may not yet be heralded with the fever pitch of first-round sports draft picks, but qualified candidates are in high demand. Earlier this spring, Ana Margarita Sanchez, a master’s degree student in the education school at Stanford University, chatted briefly with a recruiter from the San Francisco schools at a reception on campus. Two weeks later, the recruiter followed up with a 45-minute telephone interview, offering her a job on the spot.